Shu, Jiro and Kluke live in a remote village that, once a year, is attacked by a mechanical creature known as the Land Shark. One year, in an attempt to fight it off, they are carried off by it to the flying fortress of the ancient Nene, where they are trounced and a mysterious voice grants them Living Shadows with the ability to use magic.

Stealing (and crash-landing) an airship, they set off to get home and find a way to take down Nene for good...

A final third Action-RPG DS game, Awakened Shadow, starring another customizable hero/-ine, was released worldwide. After literally everyone gained Shadow Magic in Plus, it's disappeared from the world and the player character has to help Shu and friends bring it back. Its single player mode suffered, to say the least, from a focus on multiplayer and an overall lack of polish; although it is a nice alternative toTales of the Tempest.

In Awakened Shadow, the Hub Level becomes littered with inter-dimensional doors leading to a dozen Bonus Bosses that are nearly impossible to defeat in single-player, with some hidden dungeons that could have benefited the game's short main quest had they been included.

There was also an anime adaptation that had a different plot and introduced a new girl, Bouquet (who had the strange ability to become invisible while naked), along with her Hippo Shadow, to the cast. The dub went through some pretty heavy editing in places, mostly due to how Bouquet was presented in the original. The anime eventually received a sequel called Blue Dragon: Trials of the 7 Shadows and begins by following Shu and Bouquet, two years later, dealing with the aftermath of the events in the previous series. Both anime adaptations are 51 episodes long.

The entire anime series is available uncut on Hulu (provides a link to the sequel as well).

Includes examples of:

Abandoned Hospital: One of the first lengthy dungeons encountered in the first game. It even doubles as a Big Boo's Haunt, as it's the first place that has ghost enemies to fight.

Accidental Marriage: Marumaro wearing exactly one hat in Kelaso Village (where everyone wears multiple hats) causes all the little girls to ask him for marriage. For some reason Zola, who also wears one piece of headgear, isn't subjected to this, and has to bail Maro out.

Action Commands: In the first game, this appears as the Charge meter, where holding down the A button will fill up the bar and letting go at the "sweet spot" (represented by a dark red/brown spot on the bar) will enable more powerful effects. Even without hitting the sweet spot, charging often has additional benefits, such as Cure Poison going from healing one ally to the whole party when charged. The speed of the charge, as well as the sweet spot's location, depends on the class and spell/attack being used (for example, the Shadow spell under Black Magic is erratic, but Flare under the same is steady).

Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Toripo's Hearts (used to advance a particular class rank by one), which double in cost each time you buy one.

All There in the Manual: The Monster and Item Records that can be perused in the first game's Item menu hold a lot information and world lore that otherwise isn't mentioned elsewhere in the game.

Always Check Behind the Chair: Not only does just about every environmental and background object contain items you can take (most often gold, but stat boosts and EXP can be found as well), but many more hold "Nothing," which is apparently not the same as not having anything inside. Finding enough Nothing will let you get items from a certain NPC. The “Six Treasures” Downloadable Content includes a pair of glasses that places markers on top of things that are hiding Nothing.

A Load of Bull: Jiro's Minotaur, which is oddly frail-looking for a minotaur (at least until Jiro gains his Limit Break), possibly to reference its initial role as the White Mage of the group. In Awakened Shadow, the Minotaur has the physique of a normal bull.

Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: Shu's Shadow, the titular Blue Dragon (simply called "Dragon" in-game). Incidentally, King Jibral also has a dragon-like Shadow in later games, although it happens to based on Eastern dragons rather than Western ones (though its name is Kirin, like the horse-dragon creature of myth). Nene's Shadow is also a sort of dragon.

Noble Bird of Prey: Kluke's Phoenix. It starts off as a Black Mage in the games and is better suited for magical roles than physical ones. In the anime, Phoenix has barrier powers. It's played up like a Guardian Entity and powerful enough to defend against the Big Bad.

Panthera Awesome: Maro's Saber-Tooth/Tiger. Starts off in the Monk class and takes to that class and the Guardian class particularly well.

Hybrid Monster: Nene's Chimera Shadow, as the name implies, is actually a creature with the combine features of all the heroes' Shadows, sans the Killer Bat. This is because their Shadows were actually created from his.

The later games add many more Shadows to the series. For instance, Awakened Shadow adds a Hercules Beetle, a Robot, and a Devil to the first game's main trio's Shadows.

Attack Its Weak Point: Several bosses in the first game have weak points that need to be hit in order to either damage them more, mitigate their damage to the party, or to stop them from performing devastating special attacks.

Bare Your Midriff: Zola in the first game, as well as some NPCs. Awakened Shadow includes outfits for the female PC that can induce this on her.

Becoming the Mask: Averted with Zola. She wanted power, which Nene granted her, but hated working for Nene. She helped Shu and co., even becoming one of them, which she preferred. She played Double Agent and helped (willingly or unwillingly) with Nene's Evil Plan at the same time. When Shu showed her she had power inside her, she betrayed him.

Big Bad: Nene. At least, up until the end of the game; then it's Deathroy, who is actually the Ancient ultimate bioweapon Destroy.

Bonus Boss: Tons of 'em, even if you ignore the downloadable content mentioned below.

Boobs of Steel: In the first game, the bustiest character is Zola, who's the only character that isn't a child and is also considered one of the most badass characters In-Universe.

Broken Record: To play the Blue Dragon Drinking Game, take a shot every time Shu says "I won't give up!" Even if you only do it when he repeats the phrase twice in a row, you'll be drunk inside an hour.

Charge Meter: Used for magic, and the Monk job class skill "Charge Attack" can use this for normal attacks too.

The Chosen Many: The depiction of Shadow users in Blue Dragon Plus, which pretty much includes almost every major character from the first game.

Cognizant Limbs: A few bosses from the first game have these, the first one being the Hydrattler, a giant multi-headed snake.

Damsel in Distress: Kluke ends up being kidnapped by Nene during the latter half of Disc 2, prompting the party to rescue her.

Determinator: Shu's utter refusal to give up under any circumstances isn't just a plot concern. For a significant portion of the game, he cannot flee from battles. It's also how he gets his Shadow back.

Doomed Hometown: There's barely a town in the whole game that Nene doesn't regularly attack. Your own hometown isn't destroyed, but has been abandoned by the time you get back there.

Double Agent: Zola is doing one or more out of three things at any given time - helping the party, being treated like a party member, and carrying out Nene's plan. She prefers helping the party, but owes Nene because he gave her power, which is useful because of Nene's Evil Plan. She finally betrays Nene when Shu and friends show her an alternative to Nene's power.

Dragon Ascendant: In a really weird way. Deathroy, the little frog-newt thing that hangs around Nene, is actually one of the creatures that nearly destroyed the planet long ago, trapped in a weakened form. When Zola throws away Nene's power, Deathroy ingests it and, with the aid of the Eternal Engines scattered everywhere, regains its true form, becoming the final boss Destroy.

Eternal Engine: Loads of them, and toward the end of the game the whole planet turns out to be one. The term itself, however, is used in-game to refer to the power sources of the Ancient machinery.

Evil Old Folks: Nene. For much of the game, he terrorizes the towns of the world for very little reason, often instilling fear and false hope to his victims. And it's later revealed that his reason for antagonizing Shu and co was to make them power up their Shadows, which turn out to be composite Shadows of Nene's Purple Dragon. At the end of Disc 2, he absorbs the powers of their Shadows and regains a youthful form.

Expansion Pack: Downloadable content adds stuff like new items, a randomized Bonus Dungeon, and a New Game+ mode which actually advises you not to even bother trying it unless your party is at least Level 50.

Explosive Leash: In Disc 2, Nene captures Kluke and puts a collar on her when Shu and the others finally managed rescue her. He claims they must get to him within an hour or the collar will explode. This turns out to be a ruse, and the main reason Nene wanted them there was to help bring the Shadows they had to him. The collar turns out to be a restraining noose.

Expy: Several characters resemble and/or fulfill the same roles as others from the works the series' creators had their hands in:

The entire Deevee race, of which Marumaro is a member, are expies of the Moogles from Final Fantasy. They are bat/bear hybrid adorable little creatures with round noses who are obsessed with dancing and live in and around caves.

Foreshadowing: Several hints are dropped in the first game if you know where to look:

Zola's decision to betray Nene, which she had always planned to do since joining him, solidifies when she encounters the party again after they've gotten back their Shadows (which she says herself at the end of the game), despite Nene taking that power away from them (an event that Zola missed). The cutscene when she arrives on the Mechat has her acting in a more friendly manner compared to the earlier ones, where she's a bit more aloof. Notably, she also is able to use the Tension/Coporeal skill that the others gained from regaining their Shadows despite never losing her Shadow to Nene, implying that she most likely witnessed them doing that at some point between Devour Village and Noluta, and then performed the action herself.

Deathroy being Destroy is only really hinted at if you pay attention to his design and that of the giant monster in the ancient murals you find, which look eerily similar. However, Deathroy actually despising the fact that Nene kept him around as a "crutch" for his loneliness is hinted at the end of Disc 2. Nene (genuinely) thanks Deathroy for being there for him, saying that otherwise he'd probably have gone mad with loneliness. Deathroy, in one of the few instances where he isn't parroting what Nene says, responds with "That's too bad", implying that Deathroy would rather see the old man go insane than be tethered to him all this time.

Himiko, a female Ancient, isn't mentioned at all in the first game, but her existence is foreshadowed by her accessories, which are named after her and can be found in the final dungeon.

For the Evulz: How Nene presents himself for the whole of the first game. A few points in the story provide scant reasons for his behavior, but they mostly stem from him being the Last of His Kind. It isn't until Blue Dragon Plus that we're given a real reason as to why Nene acted the way he did in the first game.

Freudian Excuse: The reason Nene's such a bastard in the first game? In addition to being the last of his kind with a vague extreme aging disease, he was actually sealed by his love, who wish to preserve him until a cure was found (two other Ancients, preserved in a similar manner, appear in Awakened Shadow), but unfortunately, she had seemingly passed away once he awoke and a cure still didn't exist. Nene became angry at the world, taking his rage out on the humans who now inhabited it, and making them feel the fear and pain he had to deal with upon waking.

Gainaxing: Zola, and only her. Although she's present in the other two games (and the anime), it's really only used in the first game (and in Awakened Shadow's opening cinematic where it's barely noticeable).

Global Airship: The Mechat, gotten near the end of the first game. It reappears in Awakened Shadow as a world/cube transport fairly early into the story.

Global Currency: Gold, although you encounter a couple of people in the first game who take Medals and "Nothing", respectively.

Got the Call on Speed Dial: The entire gang resolve to regain their Shadows even after Nene takes the Shadows into himself at the end of Disc 2. They succeed.

Heel–Face Turn: Zola starts when she joins the party, helping them out, and Nene treats her like a party member, but she's still carrying out Nene's plan at the same time, making her a kind of double agent. She kills Nene after Shu takes away any reason to continue working for him.

Szabo also pulls this at the end of the game. By the next two games, he's an ally of Jibral.

Heroes Prefer Swords: Shu's default job is Sword Master, although the game doesn't have weapons to equip. Before he has his Dragon Shadow, he fights with a makeshift knife. In Awakened Shadow, two of the three weapon classes include a variety of one-handed and two-handed swords.

Heroic Resolve: How Shu, and eventually his other friends, naturally bring their Shadow Magic back after Nene forcibly removes them from the heroes. Shu himself provides the most straightforward example of his group, being the first to will his Shadow back simply by completely owning to his personal creed of never giving up.

Hopeless Boss Fight: Really, until you get to the final confrontation with Nene, your encounters with him tend to go like this.

The first fight with Eet-Yeet in Devour Village

100% Completion: Several Xbox 360 Achievements involve completing various lists, like the Monster Book and Item Log.

Inexplicable Treasure Chests: You could say they're left over from the Ancient civilization...and apparently, this group of teenagers are the first people in thousands of years who have thought to open them up and see what's inside.

Interface Screw: For some reason, the in-game compass will flip upside down in some maps, oftentimes at random when you enter an area. There's no explanation for it, outside of making path-finding more difficult.

Intrepid Merchant: Toripo, who spends the entire game looking for the Aurora Ruins. He also sells the heroes class-enhancing Hearts and stat-enhancing Elixirs.

Jiggle Physics: Zola in the game, as a consequence of her choice in attire. Maro's belly also jiggles, most notable in the cutscenes where he's dancing (which is often).

Just Friends: It's mentioned in a cutscene with Jiro that Shu does not fancy Kluke the same way Jiro does; Shu says as much when Jiro suspects him of this, and says that he'll back off if his suspicions are correct, invoking I Want My Beloved to Be Happy. However, how true it is seems to vary throughout the rest of the game, especially during Disc 2, where Shu claims that he'd never really had feelings for any girl until he became friends with Kluke, saying that she's special to him. By the end of the first game, he's even trying to get Kluke to admit which of the two boys she likes the most, with Kluke herself refusing to answer them.

It even continues into Awakened Shadow, where one of the early quests sees Shu and Jiro racing to give Kluke the most medicinal herbs for her hospital work. Jiro even lampshades the fact that they're fighting over her again, saying that it seems that neither of them had really grown up in the two years since the first game's plot.

Kleptomaniac Hero: The first game has a ludicrous amount of objects to search. And there are even rewards for searching things that don't give you money or items.

Last Disc Magic: Put in a blender with Limit Break and Summon Magic. After you regain your shadows in Disc 3, you get access to powerful "Corporeal" attacks where your Shadow temporarily splits off and becomes solid.

Last of His Kind: Nene, at least in the XBOX 360 game. And it's mostly because of this that he takes the role as the Big Bad. Then the series reveals Himiko.

Metal Slime: The Platinum and Golden Poo Snakes. They're only found on specific islands (with Platinum being a rare spawn on its island), both run from battle if given the first chance to move (which their high speed will almost always ensure unless the player prepares for that), and both give large amounts of SP (Platinum, if certain conditions are met) or EXP (Golden) upon victory.

Mr. Fixit: Jiro. Give him an Ancient device, and he'll get it working.

Inverted in the Pachess Town arc, where Marumaro actually gets the desired object to work by banging on it.

Money Spider: Oddly enough, some monster encounters justify this - the money comes out of their poo after you beat them, implying they ate other people with valuables and are literally pooping it out everywhere.

No-Gear Level: After the Xanatos Gambit mentioned below, your party begins Disc 3 without their Shadows, leaving them virtually powerless. Shu eventually manages to recover his through sheer force of will, but you have to beat a boss and work your way through a monster-filled forest before the rest of the party gets back to normal.

Parental Abandonment: Averted with Jiro and Marumaro, subverted with Shu (parents killed by the Land Shark, lives with his grandfather) and played straight with Kluke (parents also killed, lives by herself).

Pre Existing Encounters: You can see and avoid enemies, or even engage two rival groups simultaneously so that they fight each other instead of you and whittle their own numbers down. You can also learn several skills that take advantage of this trope.

Race Against the Clock: Disc 2, rescuing Kluke from the clutches of Nene and his collar in under an hour, otherwise a bomb will go off, killing her. Inverted through Nene's Xanatos Gambit; the party's Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! led them all to their demise.

Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Averted with places like the underground hospital and many "Ancient" locations, but also played straight elsewhere.

Save Point: In the form of the cube, which has a bit of significance later on.

Zola's Killer Bat makes one to Dragon Ball during their Limit Break. You'd expect it to look more like its namesake, but instead Killer Bat turns out to be a giant, white, tailed ape (with Bat's head and wings) that attacks by firing energy beams at the foe, not unlike Vegeta's giant ape form in Dragon Ball Z.

Skill Slot System: Your Shadows are actually the ones learning battle techniques, which are represented as skills you can equip into your character's slots. Certain skills also increase the number of slots you have.

Sorting Algorithm of Evil: In the first game, Nene sends progressively stronger Mecha Robos at the heroes, making one wonder why he didn't just start with these stronger Robos at the outset. Then he reveals his scheme at the end of Disc 2, justifying this trope.

Three Plus Two: Shu, Jiro and Kluke are the three, Zola and Maro are the two.

Took a Level in Badass: Essentially, all of the Shadow Wielders. Most notably Nene when he manages to cure his illness.

Underwater Ruins: This is an odd example, as they're actually inside a massive cube of water floating above the ocean.

Unwinnable by Mistake: Depending on what you're doing and what file you use, it's possible to become stuck on a New Game+ file pretty easily. Early in the game, right after the Land Shark attack, you end up in the Noob Cave. In order to proceed, you're supposed to kill the Poo Snakes and loot their treasures, which will spawn a new treasure that continues the game after opening. However, depending on the save you used for New Game Plus, it's actually possible to have the maximum amount of items on you before this, making it impossible to loot the chests and continue the game, thanks to the fact that you also can't drop excess items from your inventory, you can only sell them. Better hope you didn't save over the file used to start New Game Plus and/or have a save set before you started killing the Poo Snakes...note Since you either need to use an item to attack them (Thorn Grass) or to let them hit you so you can waste a few healing items (Medicine and Light Crystals) so you can pick up the treasure in the chests.

Unwitting Pawn: After this revelation, Nene promptly rips your Shadows away and reabsorbs them, regaining his youth and strength, and leaving your party all but helpless.

Nene was Deathroy's Unwitting Pawn all along. Deathroy, aka the Bioweapon Destroy, was waiting for an opportunity to devour Nene's soul to break the seal on his powers.

Warp Whistle: You get Warp Keys fairly early in the game, allowing you to access Warp Panels that will let you teleport back to them in an instant (barring the times where you're unable to use this action due to plot).

What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Nene invokes this on the party when they use the Defense Mecha Robo's barrier device to continuously destroy his war mechs mindlessly walking into it. When he sends his Servant Mecha Robos (who are sentient, capable of emotion just almost as well as humans, and had one of their members - the robot, Yasato - befriend them earlier in the game), the party ends up debating this trope, with Zola insisting that they keep the barrier up because the Servants are just robots. In the end, regardless of how the player feels about it, the barrier must be turned off to continue the game.

When Trees Attack: The poor village of the aptly named Devour Village suffer from demonic trees that keep them in the town so that the giant monster tree in the center can feed on them.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Nene. He had Soap Opera Disease and was dying. His lover Himiko put him into cryogenic sleep... he wakes up and she's dead, and he's still dying. In other words, he missed out on living with his true love for nothing. This makes him almost kill humans because he was basically so pissed off at everyone.

Wrong Side All Along: The henchman of the Big Bad (after the Big Bad has supposedly been defeated) reveals that the party is being used to open up the Dark World by their leader. Of course, they don't realize this until after helping almost destroy the world.

Xanatos Gambit: At the end of Disc 2, Nene reveals that your Shadows are actually fragments of his one, and you've just spent two discs powering them up for him.

This is lucky for Zola: She hates working for Nene, and would rather help Shu and co. This way, she can do both until Shu makes Nene's gift to her defunct.

The anime and manga adaptations include examples of:

The Anime of the Game: There are two of them, with the second essentially being the "second season" of the first. The second is called Blue Dragon: Trials of the Seven Shadows and takes place two years after the first.

Alternate Continuity: For the anime, the characters' appearances are mostly the same as they are in the game, except for small details like Jiro's hair being gray instead of black, if not much else... The entire story is almost completely different from the one in the games, with many changes to the first game's base plot of "Nene terrorizes the world's towns for his own amusement" (for example, unlike the games, Shu and Jiro aren't childhood friends, starting off as rivals as soon as they meet, Zola is introduced almost immediately instead of midway through the plot, and Nene's army includes human soldiers).

Belly Dancer: In Episode 9 of Trials of the 7 Shadows, the group comes across Donna and Reina, two twin dancers who have the power to steal the souls of jealous people. They were originally penniless on the streets, losing their money to other beautiful dancers until Mikheil offered the two Dragon Scales, which made them appear more beautiful and gave them their soul-stealing powers.

Bowdlerization: Done in the US version of the anime, regarding Bouquet, most likely because of her age.

Canon Foreigner: Bouquet, the ditzy barmaid, and Homeron. They surprisingly did not make an appearance in Blue Dragon Plus, even though anything that breathed from the first game was part of the party. Hell, a couple of things that didn't breathe in the original game joined the party.

The closest the games come to referencing Bouquet is in Awakened Shadow, where you can make a female PC with Bouquet's hairstyle and eyes (both the default choices when starting a new game, although the hairstyle has some slight differences and the eyes aren't purple).

In-Name-Only: There is also a manga spinoff, which is so different from the source material (mainly thanks to being drawn by the Death Note guy) that the only real connections the two have is that the characters have living shadows, and the monsters eat each other (a gameplay gimmick).

Ms. Fanservice: Bouquet, in one of the most transparent examples of the trope. In the first series, she's introduced boobs-first and her innate invisibility powers only activate when she's nude, which would make her an inversion, except she's drawn more often than not as a blue ghost during these scenes, allowing viewers to see her even when they shouldn't. Additionally, her Hippo Shadow is essentially useless, nearly making her into an anime Joke Character when it comes to combat. Even after it gains a useful combat ability, The Worf Effect makes sure that she and her Shadow don't really succeed at using it well.

Suddenly Voiced: All the Shadows can talk, whereas in the games they remain silent, only retaining their animal roars.

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